In typical wireless networks such as cellular networks or infrastructure-based Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), wireless routing is simple because only the last hop is wireless. However, in multi-hop wireless networks, routing has a much important role for data communications because data is sent via multiple wireless hops instead of a single hop. Thus, routing in a multi-hop wireless network versus a last-hop wireless transmission has a much greater chance of affecting the data communications. A data flow includes information, which may be for one application or service. The source and destination can send or receive data flows via the route and the data flows may pass through the route to the Internet or another network.
Conventionally, all the data flows in a multi-hop wireless network are provided via a single route to the source or the destination. A data flow includes information, which may be for one application or service. When the route from a specific source to a specific destination degrades, such as due to mobility or interference, all the data flows using that route may use another route if the multi-hop wireless network supports another route. The new route selection may be performed using a single metric, and all the data flows have to use the new route. However, different data flows may benefit from different routes because different routes may provide different performance for different metrics. For example, a route may be selected that has the greatest bandwidth, but that route may not be the best route for a data flow that benefits from a route that has the smallest latency. Thus, a single route in the multi-hop wireless network may not provide the best performance for different types of data flows. At least one data flow may suffer performance degradation even though another data flow may benefit from the new route.